Horace Harmon Lurton

Lurton achieved prestige as a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, a position to which he was appointed by President Howard Taft in 1909, serving until his death in 1914. Lurton was one of three former Confederates who served on the Supreme Court. He served in the Confederate Army as a Sergeant Major and joined Confederate General John Hunt Morgan's cavalry band of raiders, who sabotaged Union transportation and communication lines. He was captured twice, escaping the first time, but not the second, spending more than a year in a Lake Erie prisoner-of-war camp. After the surrender of the Confederacy and himself giving an oath of loyalty, Lurton continued his legal studies, building a private practice and later teaching law at Vanderbilt. Prior to the Supreme Court, he served on the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. Lurton was on Sewanee’s Board of Trustees when he received his honorary degree in 1899. He also lectured at the University.

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Proceedings of the Board of Trustees of the University of the South, 1897-1899: 5.